On 05/27/2010 10:30 AM, Dave McGuire wrote:
Especially by it's being an attached processor,
nearly all Cray-1
software (save for things like libraries) would be specific to whatever
front-end system was in use.
Not usually. The operating system needs to know a
little bit about
what's connected to the I/O channels (including the front-end systems),
but user-space software, including applications, normally relies on
operating system services from COS or UniCOS running natively on the
main CPU. Application software didn't normally interact directly with
the front-end systems any more than than application software on IBM
mainframes interacts with the mainframe's service processor. The
front-end systems were there to boot and manage the system and provide
I/O services for the operating system. Usually when sites upgraded from
a Cray-1 to an XMP they didn't have to change their application software
at all, even though the front end was completely different.
According to the users I've spoken to, the majority of Cray-1
applications were Fortran programs submitted as batch jobs. Sometimes
they substituted hand-optimized assembler for inner loops where CFT
didn't vectorize the code sufficiently.
Further, much of it was purpose-built by
the people using the machines.
That was true of almost all application software on Crays in the early
days. Later there were some commercial software packages that saw
significant use on Crays, for things like finite element analysis,
computational fluid dynamics, and various other types of simulations.
I'm wondering if Cray themselves (current
incarnation) might still
have COS lying around on tape somewhere.
Doubtful given how many times they changed hands.
Eric